Department for Education
Diary Manager to Chief Operating Officer
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London (SW1P 3BT)
Job Summary
The Diary Manager provides professional and proactive diary management support to the Chief Operating Officer (COO), who also serves as the Director General for Strategy and Operations Group, ensuring their time is prioritised effectively to support delivery of both theirs and organisational objectives. The postholder will manage competing demands, coordinate key meetings and travel arrangements, maintain oversight of actions, and ensure the smooth operation of senior-level business activities.
Job Description
Responsibilities will include
Diary Management
- Manage the COO’s diary, prioritising time effectively, resolving scheduling conflicts, and ensuring meetings are planned efficiently with adequate preparation time.
- Maintain an accurate and up-to-date diary and OneNote, making adjustments in real time as priorities change.
- Monitor upcoming meetings and proactively identify where briefing material or supporting information is required.
Senior Leader Support
- Coordinate travel arrangements, ensuring plans are well organised and comply with departmental policies.
- Support the preparation of daily and weekly priorities by gathering updates, identifying issues requiring attention, and helping to ensure senior leaders receive concise and accurate information.
- Maintain effective working relationships with colleagues across the organisation to facilitate the smooth delivery of business activity.
- Provide effective and comprehensive support through maintaining records in our HR system, processing expenses, coordinating annual leave, supporting transparency returns, and ensuring compliance with departmental processes and policies.
Business Coordination
- Manage incoming correspondence and mailbox traffic, ensuring enquiries are prioritised and directed appropriately.
- Monitor actions arising from meetings and diary commitments, maintaining accurate records and ensuring timely completion.
- Track progress of actions across teams, following up where necessary and escalating risks or delays.
Meeting and Secretariat Support
- Coordinate meeting arrangements, including scheduling, logistics and circulation of papers.
- Provide secretariat support for senior meetings, including agenda management, note-taking and action tracking where required.
- Ensure key decisions and actions are accurately recorded and communicated to relevant stakeholders.
Responsibilities Will Include
Diary Management
- Manage the COO’s diary, prioritising time effectively, resolving scheduling conflicts, and ensuring meetings are planned efficiently with adequate preparation time.
- Maintain an accurate and up-to-date diary and OneNote, making adjustments in real time as priorities change.
- Monitor upcoming meetings and proactively identify where briefing material or supporting information is required.
Senior Leader Support
- Coordinate travel arrangements, ensuring plans are well organised and comply with departmental policies.
- Support the preparation of daily and weekly priorities by gathering updates, identifying issues requiring attention, and helping to ensure senior leaders receive concise and accurate information.
- Maintain effective working relationships with colleagues across the organisation to facilitate the smooth delivery of business activity.
- Provide effective and comprehensive support through maintaining records in our HR system, processing expenses, coordinating annual leave, supporting transparency returns, and ensuring compliance with departmental processes and policies.
Business Coordination
- Manage incoming correspondence and mailbox traffic, ensuring enquiries are prioritised and directed appropriately.
- Monitor actions arising from meetings and diary commitments, maintaining accurate records and ensuring timely completion.
- Track progress of actions across teams, following up where necessary and escalating risks or delays.
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Meeting and Secretariat Support
- Coordinate meeting arrangements, including scheduling, logistics and circulation of papers.
- Provide secretariat support for senior meetings, including agenda management, note-taking and action tracking where required.
- Ensure key decisions and actions are accurately recorded and communicated to relevant stakeholders.
Person specification
Essential Criteria
- Experience of diary management and coordinating competing priorities.
- Strong organisational skills with excellent attention to detail.
- Ability to work independently, use sound judgement and make informed decisions.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Ability to work calmly under pressure and adapt to changing priorities.
Desirable Criteria
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications, including Outlook, Teams and OneNote.
Desirable criteria will only be assessed at interview in the event of a tie break situation to make an informed decision.
Alongside your salary of £36,679, Department for Education contributes £10,625 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
Applicants currently holding a permanent post in the Civil Service should note that, if successful, their salary on appointment would be determined by the Department’s transfer / promotion policies.
As a member of the DfE, you will be entitled to join the highly competitive Civil Service Pension Scheme, which many experts agree is one of the most generous in the UK.
You will have 25 days leave, increasing by 1 day every year to a maximum of 30 days after five years’ service. In addition, all staff receive the King’s Birthday privilege holiday and 8 days’ bank and public holidays.
Most DfE employees will be working a hybrid pattern, spending at least 60% of their time in an office or work setting. Changes to these working arrangements are available in exceptional circumstances but must be agreed with the line manager and in line with the requirements of the role.
Travel to your primary office location will not be paid for by DfE, but travel to an office which is not your main location will be covered.
As an organisation, which exists to support education and lifelong learning, we offer our staff excellent professional development opportunities.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Selection process details
To apply for this role, please select 'Apply Now' at the top or bottom of this advert. CV details need to be included in the template within the application form; attached or emailed CVs will not be considered.
Stage 1: Application
At sift stage, you will be assessed on your Experience in line with the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job advert.
To Apply For This Role, Please Provide
- A Short CV setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role.
- Your Statement of Suitability – In no more than 750 words, provide examples of how your personal skills, qualities and experience meet the essential criteria. This is not intended to be a cover letter, instead work through each essential criteria in turn. You may wish to follow the STAR technique to help focus your examples. The key things we are looking for are what you did, how you did it and what the outcome was.
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To confirm, the maximum word count for the statement of suitability is 750 words. Please adhere to this limit as anything over 750 words will not be taken into account.
The CV and Statement of Suitability will be assessed against the essential criteria detailed in the advert.
Should there be a high volume of applicants, sifting will be restricted to just assessing personal statements.
Please note, CV details must be contained within the template on the application form. Any CV or Statement of Suitability that has been emailed to our team will not be considered.
Application sifting will take place w/c 17 August 2026 onwards. Please note these dates are subject to change.
If you are successful at application sift stage, your application will be progressed onto Stage 2 part of the Selection process.
Stage 2: Interview
The interview will last approximately 1 hour. You will be asked questions on the Essential Criteria listed above to determine your level of experience in these areas.
Interviews will take place towards the September 2026. Please note these dates are subject to change. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Interviews will be held in person at our London Hub, Sanctuary Buildings, Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BT.
We receive many applications, and unfortunately we’re not able to provide feedback for candidates who aren’t shortlisted. Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
All communications will be electronic therefore it is vitally important that you check your Civil Service Jobs account regularly, as well as your spam/junk email folder.
Important Information
In your application, please don’t include personal information that identifies you.
This means we can recruit based on your knowledge and skills, and not background, gender or ethnicity - it's called name blind recruitment (opens in a new window).
Please ensure that you remove from your application, all references to your:
- name/title
- educational institutions
- age
- gender
- email address
- postal address
- phone number
- nationality/immigration status
We reserve the right to raise the minimum pass mark in the event of a high volume or strong field of candidates.
Please be aware that this role can only be worked in the UK from the location options provided and not from overseas.
The government is committed to supporting apprenticeships, enabling people to learn and progress in a role whilst earning. We want to monitor the number of people who have completed apprenticeships who are now applying to progress further in their career and are asking this question to all candidates, on all vacancies. You will be asked a question as part of the application process about any previous apprenticeships you have completed. Your response to this question will not affect your application and it is not a requirement of the role to have completed a previous apprenticeship.
If successful and transferring from another Government Department a criminal record check maybe carried out.
In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to
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